


blue

by angstonly



Category: NCT (Band), WAYV
Genre: Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Melancholy, Qian Kun-centric, Strangers, Unreliable Narrator, kind of??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25947067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstonly/pseuds/angstonly
Summary: Johnny sits, and Kun expects conversation, but only silence says hello. Kun watches him, looks at the way he stares out the window with his lips slightly parted. His hair is pushed back and messy, longer than in their last encounter. Pretty."How's photography?" Kun asks, and the way Johnny looks at him stabs him in the chest. Has Johnny found his way over to Kun's side of life?(or: johnny comes back to kun's city years later as a different person)
Relationships: Suh Youngho | Johnny/Qian Kun
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cobalamincosel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/gifts).



> ate mon ;___; i brought this idea up a WHIIILE back and only got around to writing it now. i hope you like it!! even though it's very hdsjsdfhjdsfhj yeah!! not as straightforward. i love u thank u for indulging my random idea and i really !! hope you enjoy !!! this short baby !!

He commands attention wherever he goes. Although one may argue that it's to be expected when you're a muscular man that towers over the average person, Kun thinks it has little to do with his stature. This isn't to say it doesn't help—it absolutely does. But to Kun, it has more to do with everything else.

There's no one thing that Kun can point out as a the key point, the one defining detail that that makes the stranger so remarkable. He supposes it's everything—every small piece of the puzzle, every little negligible feature that comes together to create the undeniably staggering whole.

He smiles brightly, laughs freely, speaks as though his voice is laced with sweet honey. Pleasant—that's how Kun would describe listening to him. There isn't anything particularly striking about the words they exchange, conversation often limited to what's necessary to complete their transactions in this humble café. If he's lucky, the stranger will offer pleasantries, small talk to pass the time when the café is empty and it's far too quiet. The stranger doesn't enjoy silence, or at least that's what Kun thinks.

He learns the stranger's name two weeks after his first visit.

"Iced Americano for Johnny, please," he says, lips stretched into a smile.

"Johnny," Kun repeats as he writes it on the cup. "Depp? Cash? Carson?"

"Suh," he answers. "Johnny Suh. It's my name this time. Figured now's the time to use my actual name instead of a celebrity's since it's my last day here."

Kun feigns disinterest, maintains cold distance as he makes Johnny's drink. He takes his time, pace much slower than normal. He can afford to slow down; there's no one around save for the part-timer taking a nap in the backroom.

"Did you enjoy your time here?" Kun asks, glancing up briefly to meet his gaze before fixating on the coffee. Kun wonders how hospitality workers do this whole small talk thing. He's already tired.

Then Johnny speaks, relays stories of his two-week escape, animated and lovely and wonderful. Kun isn't tired anymore. He doesn't understand it, can't comprehend the fire that rises from within him. He's intrigued by this man, by the way way he carries himself. So full of life, of vigor that Kun has long since bartered for miserable survival in hell.

He sets the coffee down in front of him, but Johnny is too engrossed in his storytelling to notice. He clutches at his belly and throws his head back as he laughs in between words, losing himself in his own humor. Kun doesn't really think the story is funny, but he laughs anyway. Johnny's laugh is too infectious. Kun likens it to one of those catchy pop songs that doesn't quite make sense, but it stays stuck in your head regardless. Even when the laughter dies down, Kun can still hear him.

"Well, thanks for the coffee," Johnny says, raising it up toward Kun with a nod. "May we meet again someday—" Johnny peers over at his name tag. "—Kun."

"Safe travels," greets Kun, flashing a polite dimpled smile, ignoring how sweet his name sounds on Johnny's tongue. "I hope you've made wonderful memories here."

Johnny laughs one more time, offers Kun one more smile before finally walking out the door.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* — *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Not much changes over the years. The world is still slow, still agonizingly mundane. The sun still rises in the east, sets in the west. The earth still spins on its axis, revolves around the sun. Kun still wakes up every morning, works every day, sleeps every night. Life is still a rehearsed play, a show that never ends.

He sighs as he sits in the corner of the café, now a mere patron to the establishment that paid his bills in his teens. Kun finds himself attached to the business for some reason. Call it sentimentalism.

"Refill, Gege?" Renjun, one of the new part-timers, asks as he holds up a pot of coffee. "Made a fresh pot for you."

"Yes, thank you, Renjun," Kun answers, smiling as he inhales the scent of the coffee. How invigorating. "Have you been well? Chenle tells me your exhibit is coming up fairly soon."

"Ah, yeah." Renjun gives him a stilted smile, shoulders shrugging. "It's really stressful, but I'm doing my best. It's difficult, though. I keep wanting to redo everything I've made, you know? Like nothing is good enough."

"I understand." Kun takes a sip of his drink, thinking back to his own academic years and the exhausting self-doubt that plagued his every waking moment. He chuckles, nostalgic albeit only slightly for the days in which he still had the capability to care. "Your art is wonderful, Renjun. Everything will go well."

Kun turns his attention back to the empty Word document on his laptop as Renjun goes back to work, spinning his pen idly between his fingers as words fail him yet again. His entire life is full of irony. A writer who doesn't write. A musician who doesn't play. A human who doesn't live. Funny. Absolutely funny.

He packs his things after half an hour of impassively staring at his laptop screen. Another productive day of sitting in the café doing absolutely nothing. Wonderful, Kun thinks. He smiles to himself with a shake of his head. Now's the perfect time to stare out the window and watch the people pass him by.

Then he hears a voice. The same but different. Kun frowns.

There he stands—Johnny Suh from all those years ago, ordering an iced Americano like he always does. It brings back memories, but there's something different. He can faintly hear Johnny talking to Renjun, recalling the last time he was here. Johnny says Kun's name, and Kun feels the tug at his chest—the same one from back then. Peculiar.

"Oh, he's over there!" Kun hears Renjun say. He hears Johnny laugh, but it's off. Something is off. He doesn't know what.

"Hey," greets Johnny, coffee in hand. "Mind if I sit with you?"

Kun looks up, meets his gaze. His heart hurts. "Yeah, of course."

Johnny sits, and Kun expects conversation, but only silence says hello. Kun watches him, looks at the way he stares out the window with his lips slightly parted. His hair is pushed back and messy, longer than in their last encounter. Pretty.

"How's photography?" Kun asks, and the way Johnny looks at him stabs him in the chest. Has Johnny found his way over to Kun's side of life? 

"How did you know?" Johnny asks back, fidgeting with the condensation on his cup.

"You told me."

Johnny pauses with an expression Kun doesn't enjoy. He's looking at Kun as though searching his eyes for something. Whatever it is, Kun wants to know. If he has it, he's more than willing to give.

"You remember." is all Johnny says, slumping against his chair.

"Yeah."

More silence. Johnny glances down at his hands, eyebrows knitted together. Whatever is on his mind clearly displeases him. Kun wants to know, wants to figure out if there's anything he can do to help, to find the missing zest he no longer sees glimmering in Johnny's eyes.

"Wha—Johnny, are you crying?"

Johnny laughs. This time, it sounds a little more like before. "Sorry, I just—" he takes the heap of napkins Kun slides over to him in a panic and pats his tears dry. "It's been a difficult couple of years."

Kun gapes at him, forehead creasing. It's one sentence. One simple sentence, yet it carries the weight of Johnny's lost fire and tells Kun all that he needs to know. It's strange. Johnny is a stranger. A mere stranger. Yet Kun wants to do something, wants to hunt for the piece of the puzzle Johnny no longer has.

"Johnny," he says, "would you be willing to accompany me somewhere?"

"Yes," Johnny says, "I would love to."

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* — *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

"I didn't go here when I visited," Johnny whispers, feet dug into warm sand, gaze fixed on the line where the sea meets the sky. Everything is blue, so placidly blue. When Johnny smiles, Kun smiles too.

"It's a hidden gem," Kun says as grains of sand passes through his fingers. "Still undiscovered by city tourism. I used to go here a lot when I was still in school, contemplating the meaning of life and whether anything is ever worth it."

"That's… sad."

"It's real."

Johnny chuckles, allowing himself to fall back on the sand. Kun follows his lead, watching the clouds rolling past as he thinks back to the old days. A lost soul, unsure of the world around him, still holding onto some form of hope for the future.

"Did you find your answers?"

Kun glances over at Johnny, who's staring at him so intently that he somehow feels bashful. He holds his gaze despite the warmth seeping into his skin. "I did."

"And?"

"There are no answers," says Kun. "What is today may not be tomorrow. What was yesterday may not be today. Everything is and isn't. Everything is nothing, nothing is everything. Then we die."

Johnny stares at him. Then he smiles. "How grim. Is that why you never smile?"

Kun blinks at him. "I do smile."

"You do and you don't," says Johnny. "I noticed it back then. Your smile—it is and it isn't, like you say everything is."

Kun laughs softly. He doesn't know what pushes him to do so, but he reaches over and takes Johnny's hand. It's warm—warmer than the sand or the sunlight that kisses his skin. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Yours is gone. I noticed."

Johnny huffs a laugh and laces their fingers together. "It's been a rough couple of years."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really."

"Okay," Kun says. "I won't ask."

They lie side by side as the sun begins to set, admiring the colors that paint the heavens. Colors before the darkness, before the sky dims to purple and midnight hues. It is everything and it is nothing. He doesn't understand how he feels, but he supposes it doesn't matter.

Johnny looks over at him and squeezes his hand, and Kun looks back with a smile. There's something about the way he looks at him that makes Kun want to say something, anything at all. Hilarious. His friends would have a lot to say about this.

"You're staring," Johnny points out. He doesn't know how it happened, but their shoulders are touching now. He's so close, so _so_ close, and Kun wonders, for a very brief moment, what it would be like to kiss him.

"You're eye-catching," says Kun. "You command attention wherever you go."

Johnny laughs, thumb lightly brushing against the back of Kun's hand. "Is it because I'm gigantic?"

"No." Faint rose dusts across Kun's face. He doesn't look away. "You have something about you that just grabs attention. Every time I saw you, you always seemed very warm. The kind of warm that makes you feel like maybe the world isn't as fucked up as it really is. It's dumb, isn't it?"

"No, it isn't," Johnny says, lips tugging upwards. "Thank you, Kun. You're very kind."

"I like seeing you smile," Kun admits with a shrug. "Is that a smile?"

"Yes, it is." Johnny says. "Is yours?"

"Yes," Kun says, "it is."

He doesn't know how long they stay in that small beach park, talking and laughing about everything and nothing. Kun still knows nothing about what's happened to Johnny or why he's suddenly returned to this nondescript city, but little by little, he sees it—the glimmer in his eyes, the spirit Kun had always wished he still had.

Hope is not all lost, Kun thinks, for a man like Johnny exists. He has everything, _is_ everything. He toes the line between life and living, but Kun believes. He desperately believes that Johnny will live.

He has to.

**Author's Note:**

> [twt](http://twitter.com/scammerjaem)   
>  [cc](http://curiouscat.me/angstonly)


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